What does 追い付け飛び付け mean?

Question

I jotted this down while playing a video game and didn't have a chance to get around to asking what the heck it mean until now.

（アベノ）ウシワカ隊長に追い付け飛び付けッス

Particularly, what's standing out to me is the last part of that phase, 飛び付け. I don't even know where to begin with that one.

I also want to bring up that when I googled this phrase, thinking, "Oh hey, maybe this is another weird cultural thing I don't get!", 追いつけ追い越せ popped up as one of the first results, while typing. As a bit of a side note, I understand that particular phrase to mean something along the lines of "to catch up with and pass". Not sure if that's completely related or not though.

Anyway, any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading. ^-^

Answer 1

Judging from what's written in this blog post...: http://mysteriousgarden.blog32.fc2.com/blog-entry-279.html

「オレ、ウシワカ隊長にはマジ憧れてるッスから」って
「それはもう色々調べてるんス」って・・・
アベノはやっぱり・・・(ﾉﾟ⊿ﾟ)ﾉ
いや、微笑ましいので良いけどね、アベノ。
ハート飛ばしながら“追い付け 飛び付け”って違うよーアベノたん。
追い付け追い越せだよね、普通はさ。

アベノ not only respects ウシワカ as an ideal boss, he also seems to have a special emotion toward ウシワカ. The "normal" phrase he should have used here is 追いつけ追い越せ, which is a common set phrase, as you already know. But he (jokingly or unintentionally) said 飛びつけ instead, which is literally jumping in to ウシワカ, implying his affection.

Answer 2

「飛{と}び付{つ}け」 is the imperative form of 「飛び付く」("to jump on (a person/thing)".

「追{お}い付け飛び付け」 = "Catch up and jump on (him)!"

Without being familiar with this game or the story, I should not be making a hasty conclusion, but I do suspect that the phrase 「追い付け飛び付け」 might well be a parodic expression of the far more common 「追いつけ追い越{こ}せ」 ("Catch up and pass!").

"Catch up and jump on Captain Ushiwaka, I say!"

The 「ッス」 part at the end is highly colloquial. Its function is the affirm one's own word, which is why I used "I say" in my English translation. The "sentence" was never meant to follow the traditional prose grammar in the first place.